Working or Playing Indoors, New Yorkers Face an Unabated Roar

The noise level at the Standard Hotel’s Biergarten on a recent night averaged 96 decibels, which could cause hearing damage.Credit
Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

The waitress’s lips were moving but nothing seemed to be coming out. Hundreds of voices swallowed her words as a D.J. pumped out a ticka ticka of dance beats. The happy hour-fueled din rose with it, amplified by tin ceilings and tiled walls.

“I’ve been getting migraines,” the waitress shouted on a recent Thursday night, leaning in to be heard. She said that she woke up with her ears buzzing, and that her doctor had recently prescribed seizure medicine: “It decreases the amount of headaches you get.”

The restaurant, Lavo in Midtown Manhattan, is not just loud but often dangerously so. On that night, the noise averaged 96 decibels over the course of an hour, as loud as a power mower, and a level to which, by government standards, workers should not be exposed for more than three and a half hours without protection for their hearing.

Lavo is far from alone. Across New York City, in restaurants and bars, but also in stores and gyms, loud noise has become a fact of life in the very places where people have traditionally sought respite from urban stress. The New York Times measured noise levels at 37 restaurants, bars, stores and gyms across the city and found levels that experts said bordered on dangerous at one-third of them.

At the Brooklyn Star in Williamsburg, the volume averaged 94 decibels over an hour and a half — as loud as an electric drill. At the Standard Hotel’s Biergarten in the meatpacking district, where workers can log 10-hour shifts, the noise level averaged 96 decibels. No music was playing: the noise was generated by hundreds of voices bouncing off the metal skeleton of the High Line.

At Beaumarchais, a nightclub-like brasserie on West 13th Street, the music averaged 99 decibels over 20 minutes and reached 102 in its loudest 5 minutes. “It definitely takes a toll,” a waiter said.

Workers at these places said the sound levels, which were recorded over periods as long as an hour and a half, were typical when they were working.

One spin class at a Crunch gym on the Upper West Side averaged 100 decibels over 40 minutes and hit 105 in its loudest 5. At a Crunch gym in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the noise level averaged 91 decibels. At the Fifth Avenue flagship store of Abercrombie & Fitch, which has designed many of its stores to resemble nightclubs, pulsating music hit 88 decibels, just shy of the limit at which workers are required to wear protection if exposed to that volume for eight hours.

By way of comparison, a C train hurtling downtown in Manhattan registered at 84 decibels; normal conversation is from 60 to 65 decibels.

Some research has shown that people drink more when music is loud; one study found that people chewed faster when tempos were sped up. Armed with this knowledge, some bars, retailers and restaurants are finely tuning sound systems, according to audio engineers and restaurant consultants.

“Think about places where they’re trying to get you in and out as quickly as possible,” said John Mayberry, an acoustical engineer in San Marino, Calif., who has railed against what he terms the “weaponization” of audio. “It’s real obvious what their intentions are.”

Some customers like the loudness. Younger people can withstand loud music longer, while older ones may run from it, helping proprietors maintain a youthful clientele and a fresh image.

But repeated exposure to loud noise often damages hearing and has been linked to higher levels of stress, hypertension and heart disease. Some restaurateurs said they were surprised that their decibel levels were too high, and a few said they were taking remedial measures.

Indeed, employees at noisy places are often the most affected, yet enforcement of existing noise regulations is almost nonexistent at places like these.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for workplace noise, generally investigates only when complaints are made; this appears to happen rarely, if ever, when it comes to restaurants, bars and gyms (the agency said it would take 138 years to inspect every workplace in the United States). In the 2011 fiscal year, all of the 14 noise violations issued by OSHA in New York City went to construction sites or factories; none went to restaurants, clubs or bars. The city has a noise code, but in the cases of restaurants and bars, it applies only to music and thumping that annoy the neighbors.

OSHA requires workers to wear hearing protection if they are exposed to 90-decibel noise for eight hours; at 85 decibels, employers must provide ear protection and conduct hearing tests.

Many hearing loss prevention experts say, however, that people should not be exposed to 100 decibels — the level at the spin class on the Upper West Side — for more than 15 minutes without hearing protection.

“We definitely consider those levels able to cause damage and likely to cause permanent damage with repeated exposure,” said Laura Kauth, an audiologist and president of the National Hearing Conservation Association. “They’re experiencing industrial level noise.”

But at all the aforementioned places, there was nary an earplug in sight.

The background noise is too loud, Dr. Hughes said, if a person’s voice has to be raised to be heard by someone three feet away. Signs of too much exposure include not hearing well after the noise stops, a ringing sound and feeling as if the ears are under pressure or blocked. None of these symptoms necessarily mean the damage is permanent, though even if hearing seems restored to normal, damage may have been done. Yet hearing loss from noise typically takes months or even years to develop.

One waiter at Lavo, who, like several other workers, did not want his name published for fear of losing his job, said he knew his hearing could be in jeopardy. But, he reasoned, slight hearing loss was inevitable, since he had also played in a band. “When it happens, it happens,” he shrugged. “Hopefully by that time they’ll have better fixes for it.”

Rick Neitzel, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, said full-time employees subjected to the volumes found at Lavo and Beaumarchais for a year or two could easily incur hearing loss. “Restaurants in the high 90s,” Dr. Neitzel said, “something really should be done.”

Tailoring the Clientele

At the Abercrombie flagship on a recent afternoon, a preteen girl plunged wide-eyed into the darkness as loud beats poured from dozens of speakers. Her mother and her grandmother trailed her. The grandmother, Nancy Hilem, 56, of Bucks County, Pa., said they had been in the shop 10 minutes but it felt as if it had been an hour because of the noise. Normally calm — she works at a funeral parlor — Ms. Hilem found herself jumpy.

“I can’t concentrate,” she said. “I can’t focus on what I want to buy because of the noise. I want to say to her, ‘Just find something, I’ll buy anything, let’s just get out!’ ”

According to Mr. Mayberry, that is exactly what Abercrombie wants: for loud music to keep out older people while teenagers venture in with their parents’ credit cards. “You can control your audience,” he said. “If you want young people in there, give them a specific type of sound.”

Abercrombie is but one example. Hollister, another Abercrombie brand, and H&M also go after the young: in their SoHo stores, volume levels stretched into the high 80s and often the low 90s.

Brian McKinley, vice president for marketing at DMX, the sensory branding company that creates Abercrombie’s playlists, said the goal was to create an “aspirational” environment. Throbbing music and dim lights make youngsters feel as if they are in a club and entice them to stay longer.

“There’s a lot of studies out there showing that the more time spent in the store correlates to more items purchased,” Mr. McKinley said. An Abercrombie spokesman said in a statement that the company’s “unique A&F in-store experience is something that our customer wants.”

Several Abercrombie employees admitted to frequent headaches. One said she hid out in the stock room to get away from the noise.

“We can’t do anything about it,” said a sales clerk, who said she often left work with a throbbing head and a throat scratched raw by shouting. “They want it to be like a club in here.”

The Abercrombie spokesman said, “We comply with all applicable laws with respect to maximum sound levels, and we conduct regular readings and assessments to ensure such compliance and that the sound does not have a negative impact on our associates.”

Wyatt Magnum, a music designer, slipped into the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square on a recent night and trotted down stairs to the restaurants. Tourists were digging into burgers, fajitas and fish and chips. A rock song was playing loudly — but not deafeningly so.

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Mr. Magnum homed in on the tempo, and guessed it to be about 125 beats per minute — about the same as the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.”

It is the perfect tempo, Mr. Magnum noted, for turning tables.

Mr. Magnum designs music programs for restaurants, bars and hotels, and often programs them to increase in tempo and volume as the day goes on, and to peak at cocktail hour, when the profit margins are largest. He counts luxury hotels and chain restaurants among his clients, though he did not want their names published, and sells an Encyclopedia of Beats-Per-Minute to help proprietors perfect tempos.

“It gets louder and faster and causes people to eat and leave,” he said.

He learned the art of molding crowd behavior as a D.J., changing songs to rotate people off dance floors and toward the bar. As more club owners enter the restaurant business, he said, they have imported their penchant for loud music — and their savvy about its effects.

“Are we manipulating you? Of course we are,” said Jon Taffer, a restaurant and night life consultant and the host of the reality show “Bar Rescue.”

“My job,” he said, “is to put my hand as deeply in your pocket as I can for as long as you like it. It’s a manipulative business.”

Not everyone buys it. Ken Friedman, majority owner of the Spotted Pig, the Breslin and the John Dory Oyster Bar, all busy Manhattan restaurants, said calculating beats per minute to speed up turnover sounded like “mumbo jumbo.” “I don’t think any great restaurants here do that,” he said.

But Mr. Magnum said the Hard Rock Cafe had the practice down to a science, ever since its founders realized that by playing loud, fast music, patrons talked less, consumed more and left quickly, a technique documented in the International Directory of Company Histories. While not denying this tactic, Hard Rock said its current approach was “vastly different,” with on-site video and guests helping to select the music.

There is research supporting Mr. Magnum’s theory. In 1985, a study by Fairfield University in Connecticut reported that people ate faster when background music was sped up, from 3.83 to 4.4 bites per minute. Nicolas Gueguen, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France, reported in the October 2008 edition of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research that higher volumes led beer drinkers in a bar to imbibe more. When the bar’s music was 72 decibels, people ordered an average of 2.6 drinks and took 14.5 minutes to finish one. But when the volume was turned up to 88 decibels, customers ordered an average of 3.4 drinks and took 11.5 minutes to finish each one.

Curt Gathje, a lead editor at Zagat who has noticed New York restaurants’ getting markedly louder in the last decade, said, “There’s a new generation that instead of going to nightclubs they go to restaurants, and nightclubs have sort of bled into restaurants.”

“People don’t want to go to a place that seems dead,” he added. “Younger people feel they want some action.”

Recent changes in restaurant design have also increased sound levels. The trend of making restaurants look like brasseries and bars to resemble speakeasies has bred an abundance of hard surfaces that can reflect and amplify sound: ceramic tiles, concrete floors and tin ceilings. This despite the fact that one of the biggest customer complaints about restaurants, according to Zagat, is noise. Yet those who like noisy places said they were energizing and gave them a sense that they were where it’s at.

Maria Vasquez, 22, a design student who spends time at Lavo — home to the 96 decibel levels and migraine-afflicted waitress — said she found the cacophony there fun. Tiffany Trifilio, 26, a fashion analyst who frequents the Standard Hotel’s Biergarten, said the din made her feel part of the crowd. And Katherine Gold, 35, who often stays at home with her baby, reveled in Lavo’s noise one recent night. “I spend my days in my apartment and at Central Park,” she said. “I have enough quiet.”

Patrons of spin classes also said the din was part of the draw. The pounding music helped them forget they were exercising, they said, and made them feel they were reliving the club days of younger years.

Yet an hour in a noisy spin class followed by a few hours in a very loud bar could easily put people over their recommended daily noise dose. Especially in New York, where people drown out yowling sirens and screeching subways by cranking up MP3 players, ears often do not get the break they need.

Muffling the Din

Representatives and owners of several New York City establishments where sound topped 90 decibels said they had not known that they might have been breaching federal guidelines.

A spokeswoman for the Standard, where the Biergarten’s average decibel levels hovered in the mid-90s, said that the sound level varied by time of day, and that the owners did not know they might be breaking federal laws. “We will look into this independently,” she said in a statement, “and center our efforts on this matter and around our staff’s well-being, which is of utmost importance to us.”

Bill Reed, one of the owners of the Brooklyn Star, said he had no idea that the restaurant’s volume might be nearing risky levels. The restaurant would install insulating foam under the tables, he said, and possibly hang sound absorption boxes, too.

Bill Bonbrest, chief operating officer for the TAO Group, which owns Lavo, said no patron or employee had ever complained about the noise. Mr. Bonbrest said he did not know that Lavo might be violating a noise standard, and a few weeks later, he said the company had hired a professional to measure the sound. A hearing conservation program would be put in place, he said, which would include providing hearing protection and employee audio tests.

And Keith McNally, owner of several brasserielike restaurants including Schiller’s Liquor Bar on the Lower East Side, which registered 91 decibels, said that the D.J. never played for more than four hours a night, and that volume was kept down before 8:30 p.m. and after 3 a.m. He also said employees were allowed to wear earplugs.

After bringing in an engineer to measure sound, the owners of Catch, a restaurant in the meatpacking district, installed 1,800 square feet of sound panels, noticeably muffling the sound. In the fall, the chef and restaurateur Andrew Carmellini installed $10,000 worth of soundproofing at the Dutch in SoHo: his customers’ biggest complaint, he said in a Twitter post, had been noise. And Alex Stupak, the chef and owner of the Empellon taquerias in the East Village and the West Village, spent close to $20,000 soundproofing his restaurants after complaints about the din. “I learned a new word reading the reviews — cacophonous,” he said. “You couldn’t hear someone across the table.”

As for the loud spin classes, Donna Cyrus, senior vice president for programming at Crunch, said that individual instructors set the volume levels, and that each sound system had limits to ensure volumes were safe. Instructors, she added, were not required to wear earplugs.

Up to 30 percent of workers exposed to noise levels of 90 decibels or more over their working lifetimes can expect hearing loss, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Few waiters or gym instructors are likely to stay in their jobs that long. But noise exposure is like sun exposure. Different people have different susceptibilities, and too much of it gradually wears on the body until, for some, irrevocable damage is done.

“It’s a lifetime accumulation that never goes away,” Dr. Hughes of the deafness institute said. “When you have damage, it’s permanent.”

Some workers admitted that they were pained by the volume. Others said they knew they were being subjected to dangerously loud levels but shrugged off the risk.

Reign Hudson, who teaches spin classes where the volume can top 100 decibels, said she was used to the loudness. Even after learning the levels were potentially dangerous to her hearing, she was unfazed. “It really irritates me if the music is too low,” she said. “Usually I’ll tell people if you don’t like loud music, don’t sit near the speaker.”

A bartender who has worked at Lavo for a year and a half said she thought her hearing was suffering a little, but she was staying in the job because the money was good. Jeffrey Sullivan, 34, a bartender at the Standard Hotel’s Biergarten, said he was surprised that the decibel levels there were so high. He has worked, however, in construction, played bass guitar in a band and surfed, all of which can be hard on the ears. He found the Standard, by contrast, soothing. “It’s nothing really piercing in here; it’s all loud voices,” he said. “It’s kind of gentle on the ears.”

Yet Nadene Grey, who used to tend bar at the Standard’s beer garden, said she had frequently been exhausted at the end of her shift. After learning of the noise measurements there, she said: “It really wears on you. I’m sure it’s the physical stress of not just making all those drinks, but the physical stress of the noise.”

Hearing loss from chronic exposure to noise starts with the loss of hearing high-frequency sounds, and the damage can go undetected for years, which is what happened to Ian Carson, a longtime bartender.

One weeknight, Mr. Carson assumed his regular spot behind the bar at Campagnola, an Italian restaurant that is an institution of sorts on the Upper East Side. A waiter came up, inhaled deeply and bellowed, “Bloody mary and a cosmopolitan.” Mr. Carson reflexively cupped his ear. “What?” he asked, tilting his head.

“Bloody mary and a cosmopolitan!” the waiter hollered back.

Mr. Carson, 66, began losing his hearing 20 years ago. Serving in the Army did not help. Neither did his stint working in discos, nor nearly three decades of working at Campagnola, which has a reputation for getting noisy, though on that particular night it was relatively quiet, averaging 82 decibels.

Sometimes Mr. Carson makes the wrong drinks. A lot of the time he just reads lips and guesses.

And when the background noise picks up, he said, “my ears are only good for hanging sunglasses.”

Emily S. Rueb and Josh Williams contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on July 20, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Working or Playing Indoors, New Yorkers Face an Unabated Roar. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe